When processing fruit, it is often necessary to place fruit in individual bags such that the weight of the fruit falls within a prescribed weight limit.
In one prior art system, fruit is separated according to diameter and an appropriate number of pieces of fruit falling within a given range of sizes is placed into a bag. According to this method, the bag is filled by count but sold by weight. This method relies upon the average weight of a piece of fruit, and many times fruit is wasted because the bag is overloaded to ensure a prescribed minimum weight for the fruit.
Many times, fruit is transported through a processing facility by conveyor belts.
U.S. Pat. No. 503,014 (Storms) shows a conveyor belt for use with a harvester or a grain binder. A moveable belt includes slats which extend diagonally across the belt. One end of each slat is relatively thick, and the remainder of the slat is thin. As grain is introduced to the belt, the thick ends of the slats engage the butts of the grain to carry the grain along the belt and deposit it in an elevator in the orientation required by a binder.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,070,210 (Woodward, Jr.) shows a parts elevator having a conveyor belt with flexible cleats attached to the strip diagonally with respect to the direction of the belt travel. As the belt passes through a hopper, the cleats engage objects and deposit them at a discharge point between the ends of the belt. At the discharge point, all of the objects slide off a cleat.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,862 (Stoppard) shows an apparatus for delivering elongate bobbins which includes a plurality of slanted trays attached to each other to resemble a conveyor belt. Each of the trays is designed to receive a single elongate bobbin and to move it between two locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,422,398 shows a conveyor belt having flexible cleats extending directly across the belt. The cleats comprise sections of flexible material which elongate as they pass over pulleys driving the conveyor belt.